The Great Dane was bred as a guard dog, the German shepherd as a herder and the tiny Pomeranian as a lap dog.
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Get Science News From The New York Times » .The emergence of man’s best friend, it is clear from scientific studies and historical records, was a rather strategic process of artificial selection that occurred over hundreds of years. Humans bred dogs for certain personality traits and looks. Over time, hundreds of breeds emerged.
An inadvertent consequence of this breeding, a new study shows, is longevity. Docile, shy dogs tend to live much longer than bold, aggressive dogs, according to a paper that will be published next month in The American Naturalist.
“We can think of this as a correlation — an undesired correlation into longevity,” said Vincent Careau, the paper’s lead author and a doctoral student of biology at the University of Sherbrooke in Quebec. He and his colleagues analyzed available data and studies, including one by a Swedish pet insurance company that evaluated canine longevity.
For instance, the English springer spaniel is 34 percent more docile than the basset hound based on a scale established in a 1995 Journal of General Psychology study and twice as likely to live longer than 10 years, Mr. Careau said. Similarly, the poodle is 29 percent more docile than the boxer, and is four times as likely to live past 10.
Mr. Careau was careful to compare dogs of similar size, since it is known that large dogs tend to die younger than smaller ones.
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